Erka Shalari: At the time I first approached you, you had just been in NYC for a while. So I had to wait a bit for this interview. What was your time there like? What vibes did the city give you?
Angela Mathis: I was completely overwhelmed by the city; New York is an incredible source of inspiration for me. Having an environment and a society around me that inspires me is the drive I need for myself and my paintings. I suddenly had so much energy that I felt like a hyperactive Energizer Bunny. I walked between 15 and 20 kilometers every day through New York, the Hamptons, and New Jersey. It was incredible!
Recently, you have been working with a volume by Charles Baudelaire. Can you tell me something about it?
Last year, I began studying Charles Baudelaire’s poems “Les Fleurs du Mal” because I have long been deeply interested in the human psyche, and these poems deal with the depths of human depravity. My childhood was marked by physical, emotional, and sexual abuse. For this reason, I developed a survival strategy very early on: I sought refuge in art/painting.
In “Les Fleurs du mal,” Baudelaire contributes his observations of a society with marginalized existences and elevates ugliness to an aesthetic category (he wonders what the aesthetics of evil look like). Charles Baudelaire always seems to be torn between the predominantly ugly and morbid, but also between the light and good and the dark and evil. I feel the same way. This is not only due to the reasons mentioned above, but also because I had a near-death experience at the age of eight. I found myself in a dialogue between life and death, between light and darkness. But in this case, the light was death. Death appeared to me as something warm and enticing, with lots of light. Life disappeared into the darkness, but then convinced me with the argument that sooner or later I would find my way back to death anyway, but with the experience of having lived. That’s why I chose life despite everything.
So this means that reading this volume has also evoked factual and sad things from your own past? Has art managed to heal or soften these bitter chapters?
Unfortunately, such pain never really heals. But the peace and quiet in my studio and painting help me, yes, definitely. Due to the unpleasant experiences I had in my childhood, I have a large “supply” of material within me and around me that I can process artistically.
How have the years in the class of Peter Doig, at the academy been? What have been the most important lessons of this class?
I joined Peter’s class after my first professor, Prof. Jörg Immendorff, passed away in 2007. There were no “lessons” in either Immendorff’s class or Peter Doig’s class. But when we had colloquia, we discussed a lot. It was very intense, and I learned a lot from both of these strong personalities, not only artistically but also personally.
You were born in Switzerland, in Chur. I’m curious—what is this place like? Would you mind taking us on a mental trip there?
Chur is located in Graubünden, where several very important artists such as Alberto Giacometti, Giovanni Segantini, Angelika Kaufmann, and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner lived and worked. The architect Peter Zumthor, who was my neighbor at the time, still lives near Chur, in Haldenstein. One of my favorite Swiss painters, Miriam Cahn, also lives in Graubünden, in Maloja/Stampa in the Engadin. Further east of Chur lies Davos, the place that inspired Thomas Mann to write his novel “The Magic Mountain.” Davos is near Küblis, where my father originally comes from. When my grandparents were still alive, I spent a lot of time there. They lived in a very large, old house. The house was situated on a spacious meadow on the edge of a small mountain village. There, you could be outside and do whatever you wanted: for example, bathe in the fountain, catch grasshoppers, chase the deer that had just “broken into” my grandmother’s garden, or help my grandfather in the apiary. My artistic career in spirit began in Graubünden (Grischun). I liked it there. It was so pure and untouched. Everything there is very romantic and idyllic, but life there cannot really be romanticized.
How do your works usually start? What are your first steps, how long do you work on a painting, and how do you know when it’s done?
I work on each painting for a very long time—several months. I paint many layers. While some are drying, I continue painting others. My works are like characters in my life; they have a personality, it’s as if they were alive. I communicate with them. The paintings are finished when I think they have enough resilience to exist without me.
Do you ever work with models?
No, never. The people in my portraits/paintings are neutral; they are not meant to represent anyone in particular. I try to create allegorical portraits that represent something, e.g., these poems by Baudelaire. So I don’t work on a specific appearance for the figures, but rather on an inner life that I try to portray.
I’d like to understand how the titles of your works come into being. And in which moments do you choose to leave a piece without a title?
In the past, I would create my works and then either come up with a title or not. For several years now, I have been working mainly in series. Now it’s the other way around: the title/specific idea is decided in advance. That’s why there are usually no untitled paintings anymore.
Thinking of your portraits, I have the feeling that when you paint, you are able to show also things that are in general not so visible, such as nerves, veins. How do you see or imagine these when you paint?
I paint the labyrinthine arteries and veins of a person’s psychological life. I always try to imagine what it would look like if a pathologist found a soul when opening a body. Unfortunately, the existence of a soul cannot be proven as matter. However, I have read that a person’s personality can be identified very roughly on the basis of their organs, namely through certain changes that the pathologist can detect. But the idea that a soul could be found as matter in every dissected body and that this could provide insights into the feelings of these people drives and inspires me.
Angela Mathis – www.instagram.com/an_m_studio/
Angela Mathis (*1985, Chur) lives and works in Berlin, Germany. She studied at the Lucerne University of Art and Design (CH), at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in the class of Prof. Jörg Immendorff and Prof. Peter Doig and for two month she studied also in Havanna at the Instituto Superior de Arte, Cuba. In 2010, she became a master student of Prof. Peter Doig. Mathis’s works are part of various public collections.